CEO Tim Cook defends Apple’s resistance in FBI iPhone case

Apple CEO Tim Cook told ABC News in a recent interview that the software will cause cancer to the company.

In a 65-page federal court filing on Thursday in Riverside, Calif, Apple said making it override the encryption of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters was wild overreach.

Although FBI agents have pieced together much about Farook and his wife, who joined him in the attack, they have expressed hope the confiscated phone contains information that would help answer outstanding questions, such as whether the killers had accomplices. Both assailants took care to destroy their personal phones before the massacre.

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan spoke with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about his opinion of the legal feud and its consequences.

Certainly, Apple is looking into several ways to defeat the Federal Bureau of Investigation in this techno-political soap opera, and according to people close to the matter, the company’s lawyers are planning to try to convince the Congress that iOS code must be protected as free speech.

Apple immediately said it opposed the order, prompting a heated back-and-forth in a situation fuelling a debate over privacy and civil liberties versus security. “To allow this phone to sit there, and not make an effort to get the information or the data that may be inside of that phone is simply not fair to the victims or the families”.

“I do think they should unlock it”, one shareholder, who asked not be quoted by name, said on the way into Friday’s event.

“Apple is 100 percent correct in not providing or doing research to create software to break into it”, said Tom Rapko, an Apple investor from Santa Barbara, California, as he waited in line to enter the auditorium at Apple’s headquarters.

A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against the FBI’s request to extract data from iPhones in cases across the country, outside the Apple Store in New York February 23, 2016. It was previously learned that by early January Apple was in regular discussions with government officials over how best to extract the phone’s data, though information stored on Apple’s end was apparently provided weeks earlier.

“Where we stand in times of controversy is a measure of our character”, said Jackson, an Apple shareholder who attended the meeting. But the CEO won praise during the meeting from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Internet rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead”.

Another person asked about the Apple Car, to Cook’s chagrin.

“I recall the Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretapping of Dr. King and the civil rights and black movements and organizations”, said Jackson, who served as an adviser to Martin Luther King Jr.

However, given that not only Microsoft but all of the corporations planning to file amicus briefs, in addition to Apple itself, have cooperated for years with other government spying initiatives, as revealed by Edward Snowden, no confidence can be placed in their ability or willingness to carry out a defense of their customers’ basic democratic right to privacy.

Apple’s share price has seen little change since the issue erupted in the news last week.

The company also argued that Pym’s order would violate the constitution’s 1st and 5th Amendments.